Written for Culture Wars
A woman gets home. She puts her keys into the front door. It crumples into a heap of wooden slats. Unphased, she goes to put her satchel on the table, only for it to give way at the knees. Her keys jump from their hook, her scarf swoons off its rack and, eventually, chunks of wall cave in, until she and her husband (whose trousers, incidentally, just won’t stay up) are buried beneath the rubble centrestage.
Suddenly, as if panicked, he springs out and darts off, triggering a vast domino effect, as ladders, furniture, lighting rigs and junk clatter and crash to earth. Noise’s Off’s second act, in which everything that could go wrong unfailingly does, ain’t got nothing on the giddy bravura of L’immediat’s opening ten minutes. You sit open-mouthed, and watch the escalating chaos of a wittily destructive Heath Robinson device. In searching for solid ground, the cast bring the world tumbling down.
Then, from a door at the back of the stage, a lone, unsuspecting cleaner turns up with a binbag. It’s the equivalent of stepping into a warzone armed with a toy sword.
Created by Camille Boitel, formerly of James Thiérrée’s Junebug Symphony company, L’immediat is a series of physical expressions of rising panic, halfway between circus and slapstick, none of which quite match the first. How could they? In the end, it deflates instead of developing, repeats instead of refining. A shame, because were it structured otherwise, L’immediat would get the standing ovation it deserves. Instead, it seems self-absorbed, even a little smug.
One woman starts to float away; another is repeatedly kidnapped by furniture; the world tilts on its axis making everything an uphill struggle; people pop out of cupboards and drawers and dart headlessly off to nowhere in particular. Stagehands scrabble about in furcoats, as if feral and desperate hobos fighting off the cold and battling for resources.
Everything is fraught and frantic. Loud bangs and metallic clashes come from the wings. It’s a show that seems to hang on by its fingertips (even if its always totally in control).
As well as the problem of diminishing returns, there’s a lack of emotional connection. L’immediat describes a feeling without actually conveying it. Nonetheless Boitel nails his target and each sketch pinpoints the hollow horror of everyday existential crises, of heart palpitations and lonely nights, when just staying afloat in the present is all you can manage.
That, incidentally, connects the piece to its predecessors on the Barbican’s main stage during Mime Festivals past. It’s a narrative that reflects the times in which we live. From the precision counterbalancing act of 2009’s Öper Öpis, to the swinging pendulum of last year’s Du Godron et Des Plumes and now the scrabbling slapstick of L’immediat, staying upright seems to be getting harder with each passing year.
Photograph: Vincent Beaume
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